


hello operator

by statusquo_ergo



Series: welcome to the neon city [3]
Category: Suits (US TV)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Season/Series 03, Things you said when you were scared, Tumblr Prompt, Vulnerable Harvey Specter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:40:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27915403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/statusquo_ergo/pseuds/statusquo_ergo
Summary: Even if it won't make a difference, I just want you to know.
Relationships: Mike Ross/Harvey Specter
Series: welcome to the neon city [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2023864
Comments: 8
Kudos: 29





	hello operator

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Things you said when you were scared
> 
> Set near the end of the Season 3 finale, after Harvey and Louis get Mike and Harold released from police custody but before Mike decides he can't be a lawyer anymore.

This place gets so dark at night. Mike never really noticed. Of course, it’s no wonder; spending his days tucked away at his cloistered little desk with its icy little LED lamp, anyone is liable to forget what sunlight is supposed to look like. How things might be different.

Tonight is a different kind of darkness, anyway.

Mike leans back in his chair. He’s never really thought about going to prison before; jail and incarceration and that sort of thing has always been some kind of abstract concept, something that might happen someday, that’ll probably happen eventually, but not _really._ In the future, maybe, but not today. Not now. But when it does, because it will, he’ll be okay, because he’s always okay. Bad things happen, and he’s always okay.

This is the kind of darkness where those sorts of words sound like they might be the truth. There’s always light at the end of the tunnel, this too shall pass, tomorrow is another day and all that.

He looks down at the corner of his monitor. Nine forty-five; Harvey’s probably still around, holed up in his office waiting for everyone else to leave. That guy sure knows how to make an impression. Mike smiles to himself and stands, stretching his arms up over his head; maybe they can head out together. Harvey owes him for not turning him in to Woodall, and it might not be an equivalent exchange, exactly, but Harvey isn’t really a “pay back a drop of water with a rushing stream” type of guy.

It’s fine. Mike will take what he can get.

Walking out of the bullpen, guided around the corner and down the hall by sense memory and humming fluorescents and the smell of toner paper, Mike wonders if he’ll miss this place when he’s gone. If it’s ingrained itself enough in his skin that he’ll wake up in the morning and start to come back before he remembers that he’s not allowed. If maybe it’ll miss him, too, if he’s been here long enough to make an impression.

Old habits die hard, but Harvey will get over it. They’ve still got some time left.

Mike nears Harvey’s office to the sound of someone talking; well, Harvey, of course. Hell of a time for a phone call, but sure, Mike will give him fifteen minutes. Not like he has anywhere to go.

“I could really use— I could use a little help right now,” Harvey says.

Mike presses his back to the wall beside the door. Harvey needs help? Mike would do anything he could to help him out, doesn’t Harvey know that? Why hasn’t he said anything, why hasn’t he asked?

“I know I don’t deserve it,” Harvey says. “I know this is all my fault, I know it is, but this isn’t about me anymore. I’m not fixing it for myself, I’m fixing it for him.”

Fixing it for who?

Mike bites his lip, casting his eyes sideways at the shadows moving in the dim, the lights thrown all in disarray as Harvey paces back and forth in front of the windows, the signed basketballs and the model cars and that weird Art Deco sculpture he’s never really understood.

Fixing it for who?

“I brought him into this, this world, this mess, and I’m just trying to get him out. He doesn’t deserve this, you know he doesn’t, he wants to do the right thing and he’ll kill himself to make it happen and I can’t let him, I can’t let that… I can’t watch him do that to himself.”

Mike wants to go in. He wants to tell Harvey that everything is okay, that everything will be okay because it always is, because they always are. He should stop this before it gets out of hand, before Harvey promises something to someone that he shouldn’t, before he asks for something he can’t take back.

He should.

“He’s a good kid, and he’ll never admit it, but he— He knows.” Harvey laughs sharply. “He knows we fucked up, he knows this is the big one. I ruined his life and I’d do anything to make it better, I’d do anything to go back in time and stop that meeting, and stop myself from making this mistake, but I know that if I could do it, if I got that chance, I know… I know I wouldn’t take it.”

Who are you talking to now? Who are you telling all of our secrets, who are you showing this little piece of your heart and soul?

Who gets to see you be such an honest man?

Then Harvey sits in his desk chair, the creaking of the frame and the skid of the wheels loud in the hollow room, this dark place of only them, and Mike watches the shadows move across the floor.

“I hate myself for it. I hate myself for all of it.”

I don’t. Does that make it better? Does that help you out, does that put a silver lining around the clouds? I don’t hate you, I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t take it back either, if I could, even though I know I should. Even though things would be so much easier that way, in that other world where everything will go wrong the way it always does but I won’t hurt you and you won’t hurt me and it’ll all be okay in the end, because it has to be. Because it always is, and we always are.

Does it help at all to know that I’m the same as you?

“And you know what? More than anything else, you know what I am right now?”

A good man trying his best to fix a terrible thing. Someone who’s doing whatever he can to make it all better.

“I’m…afraid.”

Mike folds his arms across his chest and presses his head back against the wall.

He should go away.

He should.

“This amazing kid, this—fantastic, wonderful, selfless guy was dropped right in my lap, this one bright spot in a world that’s so full of shit, and what did I do? I did what I always do. I broke him. And now he’s going to go away, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I can’t fix _him._ I can’t fix the rest of the world _for_ him. And now he’s going to lose everything, and wherever he goes, whatever he does, I won’t be there to look out for him, and I…”

It’s okay.

I’m scared, too.

But it’s okay. You know? We can be scared together. And then one day this will all be over, and we’ll wonder what we were so afraid of when we were so young and so small.

Mike’s eyes start to burn.

Harvey sighs.

“I guess, if you’re out there… I hope you can hear this.”

If you’re listening. If anybody’s listening.

Mike closes his eyes and sinks down to the floor.

I’ll take my heart off of my sleeve before morning, but if you would just listen for a minute first.

I could use a little help right now.

**Author's Note:**

> So yeah, suffice it to say that Harvey isn’t talking on the phone. I hesitate to say he’s actively _praying,_ but…that’s certainly the vibe that Mike is picking up.
> 
> Feel free to say hi on [tumblr](https://statusquoergo.tumblr.com)!


End file.
